Repair of rat sciatic nerve defect with optimized acellular rat nerve

[Objective]To observe the immunological rejection,early functional recovery and nerve regeneration in the adult rats,which had been made a 1.0 cm long gap in the continuity of the sciatic nerve and the gap was repaired by optimized acellular(OA)nerve allograft.[Method]The right sciatic nerve of adult Sprague-Dawley(SD)18 rats were exposed and 1.0 cm long segment of the nerves were removed and repaired by OA nerve allograft.Take autograft and fresh allograft as control in each 6 rats.After I month,sciatic nerve functional index(SFI),eleetrophysiological and histology studies were detected.[Result]The immunological rejection,functional recovery and nerve regeneration in OA allografts were compared with that in autografts and fresh allografts.One month after the surgery,the general observation showed good nerve continuity and the HE staining confirmed that.The SFI,nerve conduction velocity,levels of CD8~+T cells and macrophages that infiltrated the grafts and the axon densities at the midpoints of them were similar between OA allografts and autografts(P0.05),but all statistically distinguishable from fresh allografts(P0.05).[Conclusion]The results imply that OA grafts are immunologically tolerated and that the removal of cellular material and preservation of the matrix are beneficial for promoting regeneration and functional recovery through an acellular nerve graft.This gives us another promising option to repair peripheral nerve defect.